


Mycroft's Story

by earlgreytea68



Series: Nature & Nurture [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2014-12-16
Packaged: 2018-03-01 17:18:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2781368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlgreytea68/pseuds/earlgreytea68
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or: Oliver's Origin Story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mycroft's Story

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [（番外）Mycroft's Story](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9478043) by [SNAIL_APTX4869](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SNAIL_APTX4869/pseuds/SNAIL_APTX4869)
  * Translation into Русский available: [Природа и воспитание: История, рассказанная Майкрофтом (Mycroft's story)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10569210) by [PulpFiction](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PulpFiction/pseuds/PulpFiction)



> impextoo won a story from me during the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. She requested something with Mycroft and Oliver, from before Oliver arrived at 221B. And she has given permission to share it with all of you. 
> 
> I'm posting it today because today is Oliver's birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, OLIVER.

Mycroft was aware that there was a certain way people approached him when they’d done something improper. It was a certain cowering sidestep. 

Mycroft didn’t know _why_. It wasn’t as if he was ever anything but completely reasonable about other people being commonplace and simple and… _goldfish-like_. It was to be expected, after all. In fact, generally Mycroft could accurately predict exactly which error each person was going to confess to as soon as they appeared in his doorway. They were generally exactly the errors he’d thought would occur when he delegated the task to begin with. Mycroft always delegated knowing that he was just delaying the moment when he was going to clean up the mess; but not even he could deal with all messes simultaneously, and they had to be hierarchized. 

When the person in charge of Baskerville rang, however, one never knew what he might say. He was impossible to predict because Baskerville was such a deliberate black box to Mycroft. 

But it couldn’t be good when what he said over the phone was, “May I come up to London and speak with you tomorrow? Could you make room on your schedule?” It was said very politely, very evenly, but nevertheless there was a strain behind the words. 

This gave Mycroft pause. He narrowed his eyes unseeingly out his office window and said, “Why? What’s happened?” He’d rather know now, he thought. 

“Nothing especially dire. Nothing that will threaten national security or unleash a plague to kill a multitude of people.” Weak laughter. 

“How reassuring,” said Mycroft drily. “I am, however, still interested in knowing the reason you wish to see me.” 

A long moment of hesitation. Mycroft tried to make it make sense. What could possibly have happened at Baskerville? “I’d rather tell you in person,” was the answer, finally. 

“Fine,” Mycroft said flatly, displeased and making sure it was communicated. Then he told his PA to clear space for the appointment and asked, “What do we know about what Baskerville’s involved in right now?” 

The PA looked a little alarmed at the question. “Nothing, sir. You told me we weren’t to keep tabs on Baskerville.” 

“Right,” agreed Mycroft because, well, he _had_ said that, and perhaps it was unfair to blame his PA for just following orders. 

After the PA left, Mycroft sat at his desk and drummed his fingers. 

***

Mycroft wasn’t in the habit of fretting over things. It simply didn’t do. He did wonder, once or twice, in the overnight hours, what could possibly be going on in Baskerville that merited a face-to-face meeting. But then he easily dismissed it because people were constantly overreacting to the littlest issues, finding the end of the world in a love affair gone wrong that was making office politics awkward, and other things of that ilk. So, to the extent that Mycroft prepared himself for what the news was going to be in the Baskerville meeting the next day, he’d principally decided it was going to be something blown all out of proportion.

“I suppose the best way to say it is just to say it,” said the Baskerville head, fidgeting in the chair across from Mycroft. Mycroft was already bored by how much fidgeting this man had been doing in silence. 

“Please do,” he intoned. 

“We’ve accidentally cloned your brother,” he blurted out. 

Mycroft blinked at him steadily, taking that in. 

He was silent for so long that the Baskerville head said, “Did you hear me? We’ve accidentally—”

“I heard you,” Mycroft cut him off, and thought some more. And then he said, “Well. That was not at all what I was expecting.” 

The Baskerville head—and Mycroft thought he should now make a note of the man’s name, since this man was apparently, if he was to be believed, responsible for the doubling of the world’s most difficult person—fidgeted some more. He looked nearly ready to say something, then decided against it, then fidgeted some more. 

Eventually Mycroft said, “Explain. You have the capability to clone a human being?” 

“We’re working on it.”

“You either have or you haven’t.” 

“We can clone them just fine, we just can’t get them to stay alive.” 

“Oh,” Mycroft said, after a moment. “I can…see the difficulty there.” Mycroft continued. “So you’ve cloned my brother.” 

“The DNA was on file from…before…when you needed to…”

“Yes,” Mycroft said, impatiently. “I remember. And you thought it would be a good idea to try to clone him? Without consulting me or, presumably, him?”

“No. That DNA was never supposed to be used for the cloning experiments. I don’t know how it happened. But now I’ve been made aware of it and I thought you should know because—”

“Because there’s a clone of my brother out there who’s about to die?” demanded Mycroft. “What do you expect me to do about this?” 

The Baskerville head looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know, I just…thought you should know.”

“What do you want me to do? Meet him? Have tea with him?” Mycroft was out-of-sorts because, frankly, he had no idea how to react to this. His relationship with Sherlock was complicated enough as it was; he did not need the complexity of introducing a clone into the mix. What was one supposed to do to interact with your brother’s clone?

“Well, that would be unsatisfying at the moment. Seeing as he’s an infant.” 

The thought surprised Mycroft when it shouldn’t have, and he struggled to cover it. Of _course_ the clone was a baby. Of _course_. But, in his head, he’d been thinking of Sherlock, fully grown, adult, annoying. A clone of Sherlock being obstinate and foolish and belligerent the way Sherlock was. He had not been thinking of a baby. 

“Oh,” he said after a moment, hoping he wasn’t coming across too idiotically. “Right. Of course.”

Mycroft let the silence stretch. He thought of the little baby brother he’d been presented with decades earlier, of the way he’d seemed so locked up in a shell, and Mycroft had never been able to reach him, during his brief spells at home from school. Mycroft had tried so desperately hard to coax him out of that protective insularity and had never got anything for his trouble but snarls and vicious jabs. 

And now there was a different baby. A different Sherlock. But one who was still somewhere where he doubtless didn’t feel wanted, where he would develop his own protective armor. The DNA of Sherlock Holmes, Mycroft knew, was brilliant at that. 

“So,” said the Baskerville head, standing, apparently taking the long silence for dismissal. “I just thought I should tell you. And now that I’ve told you—”

“I’ll come and see him,” Mycroft heard himself say. “Of course.” 

***

He really didn’t have time for a trip to Baskerville, but with the first Sherlock the world had been given Mycroft had never seemed to have time, had always been busy with school. He didn’t want to start things off with this new Sherlock the same way. 

He didn’t tell Sherlock about the clone. Not just yet. Not until he’d seen him and verified it was actually true. Because Mycroft wasn’t entirely convinced he wasn’t having some kind of frightening break with reality. 

The cloning program was apparently very well organized and decently well-funded, and Mycroft was appalled at the rows and rows of squalling infants. There were nurses hurrying through and tending to them, but the whole place felt unavoidably like a hospital wing, sterile and devoid of true affection. Mycroft considered snatching each and every baby out of there. 

“How many?” Mycroft asked. 

“Just the one, sir. I made sure your brother’s DNA never got used again.” 

“No, how many babies?” Mycroft asked sharply. 

The Baskerville head looked a bit abashed. “I can get the exact number for you—”

“What are you doing with all of these babies?” 

“Well, they all die, sir,” he reminded him, pointing it out like Mycroft was an idiot. 

_And you just keep creating babies only to kill them?_ Mycroft wanted to ask, but didn’t because he was just going to disband this program without causing a scene first. Just as soon as he verified that Sherlock’s clone was safe and sound. 

The baby was tiny, much smaller than Sherlock had been as a baby, at least in Mycroft’s memory. He had swirls of dark hair close to his scalp that clearly held the promise of Sherlock’s curls. His eyes were scrunched up in the exhausted sleep of the newly born, so Mycroft couldn’t look in them, but the rest of him was already remarkably Sherlock. Even a baby face couldn’t completely obscure the promise of those cheekbones, and his absurd bow of a mouth was even prettier on an infant, who had it pursed in dream-thought. Mycroft looked down at him, dressed in a simple white snapsuit, standard issue, and thought of Sherlock and his flair for being put together, his affection for deep, dark colors. 

“How old is he?” Mycroft asked. 

“Two weeks,” the Baskerville head answered. “We wanted to make sure—”

“If he’d died, would you have just thrown him in the rubbish bin, relieved you would never have had to tell me?” Mycroft interrupted sourly. 

The Baskerville head looked as if he had swallowed his tongue. 

Mycroft looked at the side of the baby’s clear plastic cot. There was a piece of paper with scientific stats sellotaped to the side of it, with one number bigger than the rest: _523_. Mycroft looked at it hard. “You haven’t named him?”

“We don’t,” said the Baskerville head. “It’s easier, for when they…” He trailed off. 

Mycroft looked back at the baby. “How long does he have?”

“They never last past three months. Most of them don’t even make it this long, honestly. Only a very few make it more than a month, and only a couple ever past the two-month point.” 

Mycroft turned and left without another word. 

When he got back to London he told his PA, “We’re keeping tabs on Baskerville from now on. They have a program where they’re cloning babies. I want it disbanded, shut down, immediately. I want every baby taken from Baskerville and placed in various NICUs, wherever you can place them. I want continuing reports on their status. And I want baby number 523 placed somewhere near here.” 

The PA blinked at him like he had just said something insane, but Mycroft was already on to the next thing. 

***

In the weeks that followed, Mycroft received diminishing reports on the clone babies. True to the Baskerville head’s words, they began dying off. A month after he’d disbanded the program, in fact, there was only one baby alive. 

It was baby number 523. 

Mycroft went to visit the baby in the hospital on a daily basis. He felt a little mad for doing it, because surely the baby was too small to register he was there, and he spent most of the time sleeping through Mycroft’s visits. But Mycroft couldn’t help it: it was _literally Sherlock_ , and he’d come into the world alone and unloved, and Mycroft didn’t want him to go out the same way. 

He considered, dozens of times, telling Sherlock. _Oh, by the way, brother dear, remember that secret government laboratory of mine? It accidentally cloned you, let’s go call on the baby_. But, each day, as he considered it, he also looked at the tiny baby and thought that, against his better judgment, he actually dreaded the day when the baby would die. Mycroft was not prone to emotionally losing his head over things, but he was willing to admit that this baby had settled solidly in Mycroft’s heart and had barely ever even opened his eyes to _look_ at him. Mycroft thought of Sherlock meeting this baby, Sherlock who loved with a recklessness that terrified Mycroft. He thought of Sherlock losing this baby and thought: Why put him through that? It was easy to justify it. 

It got more difficult to justify it as one month turned into two. As, amazingly, the baby started to visibly _age_. Now the baby didn’t sleep through all of Mycroft’s visits. Now the baby opened his eyes. Now the baby smiled at Mycroft like he recognized him. Now the nurses sometimes convinced Mycroft to hold the baby, which Mycroft did only very, very, _very_ reluctantly, worried the baby might make a sudden movement and catch Mycroft by surprise, which would be very in-character for a Sherlock. Mycroft never did drop the baby, but he was convinced the baby was laughing at him. His eyes were wide and extraordinarily beautiful, Sherlock’s eyes, so much more remarkable than Mycroft’s eyes had ever been. Everything about Sherlock had always been so much more remarkable than Mycroft, Mycroft thought, and this baby was merely driving that home to him. 

“He’s a beautiful baby,” the nurse remarked once, fluffing a bit at the flyaway curls the baby was growing. 

The baby yawned, self-satisfied over this compliment. 

“Must have had a handsome dad, this one,” the nurse continued, and smiled at Mycroft. 

Mycroft wondered if the nurse thought _he_ was the father, if this was meant to be a bit of clever hinting. Mycroft ignored her. Instead, Mycroft picked up the baby’s chart and looked at the baby’s age. “Is he healthy?” he asked, trying to sound casual. 

“He is picture-perfect,” the nurse said. “He’ll live to be a hundred.” She turned and clicked her way out of the room. 

“Well,” Mycroft said to the baby, replacing the chart and peering down at him. 

The baby looked up at him wisely. He looked a bit sad, as if he knew visiting hours were over and he was about to be alone again. 

“You’re three months old now,” Mycroft told him. “Over three months old. Three months and one day. And tomorrow I’m going to take you home.”


End file.
